Crossing a Divide, Seeking Good

How the True/False Film Fest and a Church Work Together

David Wilson, right, a director of the True/False Film Fest with Dave Cover, a pastor of the Crossing, an evangelical church that sponsors an award to subjects of a documentary film each year.Credit
Scott Patrick Myers/The Crossing

As he does every year, David Wilson recently faced a decision about which documentary film to honor with a major prize in the True/False Film Fest, which he co-directs. And as he does each year, he reached out to the Dave Cover, a founding pastor of the Crossing, a 4,000-member Evangelical Presbyterian church in Columbia, Mo., to set up a screening of a candidate.

They met, along with the pastor’s staff, in the church’s high-tech audiovisual room. Mr. Wilson, a secular Jew who says he is very skeptical about American Christian culture, cued up “Private Violence,” a documentary on domestic abuse, and nervously awaited a verdict.

It’s an unusual situation for a festival director to be in, not to mention a pastor. For the last several years, the Crossing has sponsored the festival’s True Life Fund, which awards financial support, sometimes upward of $30,000, to subjects of documentaries — not the filmmakers, who customarily receive the awards. Then again, it’s an unusual marriage.

Keri Putnam, the executive director of the Sundance Institute, said she knew of no relationship like the one between the church and True/False. Her festival has no partnership with a Mormon church, say; nor can Telluride or South by Southwest claim any relationship like this one.

But none of those festivals thrum with the same importance of local community as True/False, which returns for another edition on Thursday. Mr. Wilson grew up less than a mile from the church and now lives about 100 yards from it. When Mr. Wilson was coming-of-age in the area’s punk-rock scene, Mr. Cover was leading the Campus Crusade for Christ at the nearby University of Missouri.

Photo

A scene from “After Tiller,” a film about abortion doctors.Credit
Oscilloscope Laboratories

The two make an odd couple: Mr. Wilson, 39, with his coxcomb of dark hair, and penchant for flannel and vintage sweaters, and Mr. Cover, 54, a thick-necked, shaved-headed grandfather. (They are about as close to celebrities as you might see at the festival, save for a sighting of James Franco in 2012.)

It was Mr. Cover who approached the festival with the notion of sponsorship; it wasn’t an outreach attempt by the secular programmers, which he openly says “don’t agree with us.” But when he and Mr. Wilson met for beers, they quickly found common interest in supporting the larger Columbia community as well as in supporting storytelling that can connect people in that community.

“That was the first point of kinship,” Mr. Wilson said. But still, he admitted he was suspicious. “Do they have a weird motive we can’t figure out?” he recalled thinking.

The 14-year-old church’s doctrine affirms biblical literalism and discipleship. Mr. Cover preaches what filmmakers might see as a three-act narrative in the Bible: first the story of creation, then the fall of humanity and finally, the tragedy of wanting things rather than God. Talk to Mr. Cover’s parishioners, and you’ll hear his notion repeated verbatim.

Mr. Cover articulates an evangelical message familiar to this generation’s culturally savvy churchgoers. “We don’t want to be behind a castle wall, have a moat, go out by twos to witness,” he said. “We wanted to enter the culture as people who found ways to tell the story.”

After he attended screenings at the festival, it occurred to Mr. Cover that the narrative he preaches was written into most of the films he saw. For example, in considering a slate of films that included two about controversial artists, “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present” and “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” Mr. Cover blogged on the church website that he recognized the protagonists had “a longing for something MORE.” That’s because, in his view, “God created your soul to LONG for more,” he wrote, adding, “Because the more we were created for is actually Christ himself!”

One can imagine that Ms. Abramovic would have quite a different interpretation of her own longing.

Some congregants left the church after Mr. Cover announced the partnership, and he said that every year he hears grumbling before the festival. After all, it’s by tithes from the congregation that the Crossing is the True Life Fund’s sponsor.

Mr. Wilson and his fellow festival director, Paul Sturtz, had the idea that if the Crossing supported a specific film, Mr. Cover could stand up in front of his congregation and make a case for one documentary, instead of the full festival slate. But then there was the question of agreeing on which film to back, and whether the church would exert too much influence on which film gets selected.

“It’s really nerve-racking,” Mr. Wilson said. “We try to keep as good a literal church-state barrier as possible, so to speak.”

Each year, the festival offers the church the option to suspend sponsorship if it takes issue with the festival’s preferred film.

Historically, both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Cover say, most winning films have been selected without a problem. That includes this year: Mr. Cover and his staff instantly chose “Private Violence,” a grueling exploration of domestic battery.

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“Private Violence,” about domestic abuse, is one of the films the Crossing has chosen for its award.Credit
Rex Miller

In 2011, however, Mr. Wilson brought the church a movie he thought would be objectionable only because of its profanity, which had never gotten in the way of sponsorship before. What happened instead still has Mr. Wilson shaking his head.

“To Be Heard” told the story of three Bronx teenagers trying to change their lives through poetry. Mr. Wilson though it was a perfect True Life contender. But Mr. Cover said he couldn’t back it. The festival’s managing director, Jeremy Brown, a church member who often plays translator to both sides, said the pastoral team was troubled by the film’s notion that people alone, not God, determined the path of their lives.

“I’m not the theologist Dave is, but when I reflected upon it that day, I could see where the argument was coming from,” Mr. Brown said.

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But before Mr. Wilson could decide whether to go forward without the Crossing, he was sent “The Interrupters,” about a Chicago violence-prevention team, which he knew on sight was the perfect recipient of that year’s prize. Mr. Cover agreed.

As Mr. Brown put it, the rejection of the first contender “was fortuitous or providential, depending on what side you’re coming from.”

When Mr. Wilson brought “Bully” for church consideration in 2012, he anticipated that the pastor might object that one of the film’s subjects is a lesbian, assuming the church’s intolerance for homosexuality would extend to film sponsorship. Instead, issue was taken with scenes in which a father and a funeral director surmise that kids who commit suicide go to heaven. The church supported the film, though, and saved its critique for a Sunday sermon.

During a question-and-answer session, a woman stood in the back of the theater and asked one of the film’s subjects, the mother of the lesbian teenager, how she managed to come to love her daughter, even though she was raised to believe that homosexuality was sin.

“I thought, ‘I bet that woman goes to the Crossing, and I bet that woman has a gay child, and I bet that woman is trying to reconcile all that, and here she is having seen a film that can help her work through that,’ ” Mr. Wilson said, adding that he was so moved as to weep onstage for the first time in the 10 years of the festival. Mr. Cover hazards that there were plenty of people who fit that description in the audience.

The pastor’s favorite film last year was “After Tiller,” the story of the few doctors performing third-trimester abortions in the United States. Though he and his church oppose abortion, Mr. Cover said he was moved by the doctors’ compassion and the fairness of the filmmaking.

Mr. Wilson said the “liberal Pollyanna” in him was thrilled that Mr. Cover would even watch this film, or a documentary about Ms. Abramovic, or a story of a lesbian teenager — much less encourage an entire evangelical congregation to do so.

“I like to imagine,” Mr. Wilson said, “that both of us think we’re influencing the other, and we probably both think we’re winning.”

Correction: March 9, 2014
An article on Feb. 23 about a documentary film festival that receives financial support from the Crossing, an Evangelical Presbyterian church in Missouri, misstated the year the actor James Franco was spotted at the True/False Film Fest. It was in 2012 — not last year.

Correction: March 2, 2014
An article last Sunday about a documentary film festival that receives financial support from the Crossing, an Evangelical Presbyterian church in Missouri, omitted part of the festival’s name. It is the True/False Film Fest, not the True/False documentary festival. The error was repeated in an accompanying picture caption. The article also misstated part of the name for the award the festival gives. It is the True Life Fund, not the “festival’s True/Life fund.” The article also misstated the year in which David Wilson, a festival co-director, brought the film “To Be Heard” to the attention of the church, and the year “The Interrupters” was selected for the True Life Fund. Both were in 2011, not in 2012. The article also misstated the year “Bully” was under consideration. It was 2012, not last year. Because of an editing error, an accompanying picture caption misstated the festival status of “After Tiller.” It was a favorite of the Crossing pastor Dave Cover, but it did not win an award. And, finally, a credit for a picture of David Wilson and Dave Cover misidentified the photographer. He is Scott Patrick Myers, not Gerik Parmele.

A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2014, on Page AR29 of the New York edition with the headline: Crossing a Divide, Seeking Good. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe